How big a role did SWO culture play in the recent ship collisions?

During my final active-duty assignment prior to retirement, however, I spent more time on surface ships than on submarines. And I observed many cultural differences in the way the surface ships are operated. These differences may have some bearing on the conditions that contributed to the unfortunate outcomes. This is not to suggest that submarines operate perfectly, which of course they do not. But there is a level of conservatism inherent in submarine operations that, as a general rule, I did not observe in the operation of surface combatants. That is the cultural underpinning of certain paradoxes I intend to demonstrate here. The first paradox has to do with an ethos driven by the very nature of submarining. In a submarine, the presumption is that if a serious casualty occurs, the entire crew will be lost. Although there is no such thing as an acceptable number of death...